Nubcakes posted:

Your straightforwardness has won me over. Let us test this theory. I am contacting the software distributing personal of my university right now.

I used to be like "XP IS THE BEST!" a year ago, but the longer time wears on the less problems I hear about windows 7. Eventually programs won't support XP in the not so distant future. Change is eventually inevitable.

I view SHSC as a benchmark for testing the waters. The fact that everyone is pushing 7 here seems like a good indicator it's time to move on.

Edit: Hopefully bluetooth support in 7 is better than XP. That is one major problem I do have with XP.

Edit2: I got two keys and a link to a single image for 7 Ultimate. Is it safe to assume the image is for both 32/64 bit?

Bluetooth support is more native, but sometimes you may still need to find that one driver to make things work completely (like the S9 BT headphones), once you do though, it works perfect every time.

The 32/64 difference will depend on the ISO similar to the Vista days. I believe if the ISO is >6G then it may have both 32/64bit, but if it is only around 3G, it is only one version or the other.

If the ISO image name has x86/x64 that should help identify it as well.

That was pretty quick, I can picture you being an XP user though trying to not adapt to Windows 7 (my boss is actually the same way until I showed her the benifits, especially instant search and "Show on Desktop" lol)

Anyway, the workaround for auto sort can be found here but it does involve registry tweeking so be warned.

Welcome to the modern(ish) age. Windows 7 (And for me Vista) really was a good step up from XP, In my experience, outside of 16bit apps (x64 limit) I was able to run more older programs and games with Vista/7 than I was with XP. Windows 8 will be interesting, especially for people like you since it is almost a complete revamp of the interface. I really think it will rock as a Tablet OS (Cannot wait to get my hands on a good Tablet PC with a dedicated GPU) but also wonder what they are going to tweek before the final release for normal PC use, though a lot of people who have stuck with the Previews, say that once you get used to it, it really does work fluidly which I can believe.

Vista had 1 nagging issue that would have driven you nuts (it did for me after a while) even after all the Service Packs and such, the OS still would randomly change the folder layout (from say Detailed view to Picture Thumbnail preview) without anything inside the folder changing to cause this. It was a small issue, but it happened to almost any folder randomly. It was very odd but thankfully any of the little things from Vista were completely fixed in 7, including the ability to run ATI/Nvidia drivers at the same time.

EdEddnEddy fucked around with this message at Apr 5, 2012 around 22:14

m2pt5 posted:

Using the classic theme prevents 7 from using any graphics accelerator you might have to draw the desktop, thus taking that burden off the CPU.

While I have no understanding why the 3D/Transparent look would be a negative, he does have an i5 2500K so I don't think a few GUI elements are going to bog down that rig much.

On the bright side, any apps you may run that possibly would require that AERO be disabled, (Sometimes it is automatic, sometimes not and you would have to set it manually in the shortcut options) will not be a problem in the first place.

Nubcakes posted:

Stuff

Mouse over them and the boundaries of everyhing appear rather clearly. When they made the buttons in the taskbar easily 4X bigger than a normal quicklaunch button as well as have many more functions when you mouse over an active one or right click on them. Same goes for the lower right taskbar items. Easy to drag the ones out of the little box (when you click that up arrow) down into the main taskbar to always show it and visa versa to hide it within the box. Unless you like having a ton of stuff cluttering up the taskbar at all time like past windows versions if you had a lot of background programs. Also there was no border on any of the past windows versions of the lower right icons so 7 actually makes that a new thing.

Also the folder name is in the "Address Bar" part of all the folders, sure it isn't right at the top anymore, but it may only take a few hours of use to get used to it. Also since folders all open in that single "Folders" tab in the taskbar to keep things a heck of alot neater, just mouse over that "active" Icon when you have multiple folders open and it clearly will show you the names and image thumbnail of each folder, mouse over the one you are looking for and it will focus and hide all the others before you even click on it to let you see if that is the one clearly. Small details but they become great helping additions in the long run.

Also if you like the more traditional menu's in folders. Click on Organize in a folder, go down to Layout then Menu Bar. That will bring back the familiar menu bar if you want to have it.

To each there own, but definitly take some time to learn what 7 brought out that is new (since you skipped Vista, there is a lot of new stuff for an XP user to find) and make sure you give it a good fighting shot before dismissing it as rubbish/pretty fluff. A lot of what they did made the OS feel much smoother and easier to fluidly get things done over XP. The best part of it all either way, is that it can be customized a lot to fit a style you enjoy.

EdEddnEddy fucked around with this message at Apr 5, 2012 around 22:58

May I ask, what do you actually do with your system? You have a reasonable gaming rig, but using Winamp 2.x? Pre 1.0 Vlc, fat32, etc, fighting the modern software age that much? I can understand some of these things, but I am curious as to what your side of the story is.

For those of us who love worms and/or remember Worms 3D, and would like a little change from the basic windows cursors or those horrible cursor sites, you may remember the mouse from Worms 3D that rotated to point in the direction you were moving it. (And if you don't, you were missing out a bit.) Well a long time ago a brave coder created an almost perfect implimentation for the PC.

Boz0r posted:

I have an old Windows XP partition I don't use but Windows 7 won't let me format it as it tells me it's a system drive. When I boot my computer I get a choice of booting in Windows 7 or XP, which I don't really want. How can I fix these two annoyances?

I had the exact same issue to mess with this last weekend (stupid System drive got put on one of my storage drives)

Anyway the fix is easy enough even if you are not going to format or remove the XP stuff.

In Windows 7

Open up a command prompt and type DISKPART.

Type LIST DISK
Type SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the old WinXP drive)
Type LIST PARTITION
Type SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the active partition you wish to make inactive)
Type INACTIVE
Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt
Reboot

Boz0r posted:

That probably worked, but now my computer doesn't boot I figure that the boot manager was on that partition. What do I do?

Do you have a 7 Install disk? Boot to that and run a startup repair. (If that doesn't work you can also see about getting to the command prompt within the install disk and running diskpart from there and just setting the primary drive to active (sorry forgot to tell you to check/do this earlier))

Your not boned, just a few steps I left out because not thinking fully. :/

Every once in a while I have one of those days myself and do the samn drat thing.

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

Just a heads up, but CoreTemp force-installed Yahoo Toolbar despite the fact that I unchecked "install yahoo toolbar" in the installer.

That aside, my Core2Duo is apparently locked at 998mhz. Suspicion confirmed. Now money needs to fall from the sky for a new laptop.

A can of air in the vents hasn't helped any? (Or a replacement fan if that need be the case?) Laptop heating issues can be fixed pretty easy these days.

On top of that, if it isn't a heating issue, you havent somehow switched the power profile to power saving or something have you? That would pull the cpu down to power saving clocks and keep it there to save battery.

I have a Centrino Duo (Pre Core 2) laptop that has been my video encoder machine for years and it continues to work fantastic. Hell the Atom powered netbooks get hotter idle then this thing does under load.

Medullah posted:

I use DVD Profiler, and it works amazingly well. Just type in the UPC and it adds it, along with images and a ton of info.

Check out Media Center Master. That program is awesome for getting movie info and such. Just make sure you have some reasonably accurate names on the files before you start the process or it may find something completely off the wall.

Schweinhund posted:

Some questions...

Why does Windows get worse with every release (rhetorical). Just an example. Say I'm searching the location of a folder on my HD. I search for the folder and find it, except when it displays the results, there is no way to go to the parent folder of the folder. If you look where that should be, all it gives you is a link to the search results. Why the hell do they do things like this? Is there any way around it? At least they got rid of the stupid dog animation though.

And is there any way to make it so Windows doesn't list all the folders at the top of the explorer no matter what? Like if I sort by date, all I see are folders at the top. And is there any way to mix the folders and files together like Macs do instead of keeping them separate?

And a Firefox question. Every site I go to is too small, so I have to hit CTRL and mousewheel up like 4 times so it fits my screen. How would I change things so I don't have to do this?

Answer to #1 is to right click on the file/folder you find and click "Open Folder Location" or "Open File Location"

#3 would be to check your Zoom Setting under the View menu in the Menu Bar I assume.

Schweinhund posted:

Yeah I realized the first question and edited it out. Worse is a slight exaggeration, but I did like the simpler way old versions worked.

Still a bit relative here, the "Simple" things that need to be done like adding hardware or renaming a bunch of files or hell even one file (without changing the extension) are so much better in 7 than in XP or older. Once you discover it and get used to it, going back is like working with rocks again. And The Instant Search in Vista/7 actually works where Desktop Search in XP just made everything slower than crap.

Chas McGill posted:

Why does Word insist on opening on my second display, even when that display is turned off? I've dragged it to my primary display and closed it in the hope that it'd learn its rightful place, but to no avail.

Also when it is open and active (the active window) Shift + Windows Key + Arrow key to bring it over.